Patient Stories: Lower Extremity Bypass Surgery

Bicknell Ramsay — a 74-year-old retired engineer who lives a fully active life — was concerned that a wound on his foot would not heal. Having volunteered for a clinical study on peripheral artery disease (PAD), he described the wound to the principal investigator, UCSF nurse practitioner Roberta Oka, R.N., DNSc. She referred Ramsay to Michael S. Conte, M.D., (pictured at right on left), Chief of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at UCSF Medical Center.
By then, the wound exceeded two centimeters and was enlarging. After an ankle-brachial index test found only 30 percent of normal[...]